This is an amazing good idea.
Imagine being able to communicate via instant messaging with people who don't speak your language, or translate a foreign-language news bulletin automatically when you open it in your browser.
These are just two of the applications envisioned by promoters of the Worldwide Lexicon, an all-volunteer project founded by Brian McConnell. His concept: a distributed computing architecture drawing on nodes of participating PCs--and people--around the globe. At its heart is a simple protocol that links Web-based dictionaries, encyclopedias, and translation servers. It can even query human translators via a Gnutella-like peer-to-peer network.
Here is what you can read on the Worldwide Lexicon (WWL) home page.
The worldwide lexicon project consists of two components. The first component is a simple protocol for discovering and talking to dictionary servers throughout the web. Think of this as GNUtella for dictionaries. This is based on the SOAP interface, and will allow developers to embed dictionary, encyclopedia and machine translation functionality in many different types of programs and web services.
The second component is an experiment in distributed computing similar to the SETI_at_Home project. While SETI_at_Home taps the idle CPUs of millions of personal computers, the worldwide lexicon enlists the help of internet users who are logged in, but not busy. Think of this as distributed human computation.
To participate, volunteers will download a presence awareness program. When the user is online, but apparently not busy, he or she will occasionally be prompted to provide definitions or translations to participating WWL servers. Even if only a small percentage of Internet users participate in this project, the system will be able to capture millions of new definitions per month.
Very clever!
Sources: Dennis O'Reilly, PCWorld.com, June 10, 2002; the Worldwide Lexicon (WWL) home page
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